Senator Bernie Sanders says the obvious: The USA President is the Commander in chief of the USA Military. The opposite to it is treason, particularly if you are a senator or Representative to the USA Congress.

It may not be so simple.
In his 1991 book “The Samson Option, Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy”, Seymour M. Hersh suggests that the State of Israel, if it feels too threatened, may detonate its atomic bombs to kill its enemies and itself as the biblical Sampson did.
Judging by Israel’s ongoing military ferocity, the global moral condemnation and the suggested USA abandonment,, Hersh’s admonition seems to be more significant now, 23 years later.
One of the greatest travesties of the American MSM journalist is that they have withheld from the American public the crucial knowledge that Israel has an arsenal of atomic weapons. Worse yet, MSM journalists, together with the USA government, propagandize Israel as vulnerable.
Things would be very different if the American public knew about Israeli atomic power.
Before it is too late, for the sake of Israel and the survival of the rest of the world, we need a decent, open MSM. We ought not die due to having kept our heads in the sand.

"Will Israel just let them thirst to death? Renal failure typically sets in in about 3 days if people don’t have water."
This is the most horrifying thing anybody have ever image.
If it do happen the rest of humanity would be guilty of genocide.
Israel, please stop it..

MSM journalists are manufacturing WW3 by suppressing information/comments that would help the American Public to make political/military decisions.
Example: Juan Cole's comments are not in the MSM. Yet Juan Cole, a senior university professor, expresses very strong, scholarly descending opinions that might help the public particularly in making going-to-war decisions..

In m estimation the most guilty entity in the ongoing Palestinian Genocide is American Professional Journalists working for the MSM. They know that they are COLLABORATORS. They know how propaganda, manufacturing of consent, works. They know that if the American public would be exposed to the horrors one sees in Internet sites, the American public would hit the ceiling and demand the USA Government would stop the barbaric killing.

“Crazy” people speak/act by metaphors, e.g. regaining national sovereignty by firing weapons, which makes news about “crazy” people.
“Normal” people have been expressing concern, literarily, about the USA national interest and sovereignty, which seldom makes news.
Are the crazy and the normal in the same track however different the form of communication?
The Sunday TV talk shows should invite Juan Cole to elaborate on the matter.

"Since the president faces an extremely hostile House of Representatives that would gladly ingest arsenic if Obama spoke out against the dangers of arsenic, he has little hope of enacting new legislation on renewables. "
Dr. Cole, this is a very strong metaphor suggesting National suicide posture. Is that right?

Lady Macbeth’s doctor had it right: Her distress was not a medical matter, it was not a disease. It was a moral matter: Guilt. Whether Lady Macbeth, Achilles, George Hoffman or myself, we humans are occasionally confronted with terrible moral dilemmas that are very disturbing; so repugnant to look at that we opt out the moral mode and jump in the medical mode e.g. PTSD, for the solution. Of course the solution will never come because there is no cure for a nonexistent disease.

Yet one cannot be too hard on those that go for a medical diagnosis because the medical industry is so available to the charade that advertises it, ad nauseum, for a fee. The military buys it cheap. Once you mortgage your soul into the disease mode you never get out of it. You most likely will get worse because of the side effects of the psychotropic drugs. Notice that many or most suicide/homicide cases in the military are by people who have been taking prescribed psychotropic drugs.

We, USA citizens, are all Lady Macbeth, we are all "SOLDIER" in the contemporary militaristic/foreign policy nightmare. Medicine would never cure it, no matter how much money you put in it. The only possible solution is for us to appeal to our patriotic courage and face the nightmare. How? Open up the whole thing to public discourse including the so many political inconvenient voices that are the officials kept at bay, e.g. Juan Cole.

The PTSD diagnosis is a travesty. It mocks the travesty the recent US invasions called “wars” and foreign policy: None for the USA National interest.
The PTSD diagnosis is a falsehood, an invention: There is no test, no way to demonstrate objectively a person has such “disease.”
The PTSD diagnosis is nothing but the medicalization of “personal upset.”
The PTSD diagnosis is conveniently placed on soldiers to distract them and the public from the militaristic nightmare the USA has been involved since de so called 9/11. You never hear of a differential diagnosis offered to PTSD such us: “The SOLDIER is mortified, impotent, powerless, demoralized upon the horror of military action (deceptively called wars of liberation) on innocent people in foreign lands to which he had to participate because that was the only job he could get. A horrible personal tragedy that is further desecrated with the use of word Hero and the Flag.” We-are-all-SOLDIER…
Nor would the users of the PTSD diagnosis ever consider that the SOLDIER’S act of suicide was the only power left to him.

Perhaps more than ever, the American public need access to all press, including the dissenting voices. If the USA goes to war again it should be based on the people's INFORMED CONSENT.
It looks to me that Russia would not be intimidated by the threat of military action because Russia can not afford to loose the naval base in Crimea which gives access to the Mediterranean and Atlantic.

Dr. Cole states "It has been one of my disappointments in life since 2001 to discover that various organs of the US government don’t know very much about the rest of the world and aren’t very good at understanding it."
I suggest the issue is denial, not-wanting-to-know, starting with what 9/11 was about.

Fine analysis Dr. Cole, Thanks.
But, regarding "balls" as in: " At some point, some president will have the balls simply to stop exercising the US veto when Israel is condemned by the whole world for its policy of annexing the West Bank and flooding Israeli squatters into this territory. Obama should just start abstaining, and let the rest of the world put Israel under sanctions just as they did Iran"., probably presidents do not want to loose their balls on account of the JFK's factor.

"Paranoia is not a mental disease but a symptom of some other underlying condition; a common cause is clinical depression."
This statement is contradictory and dangerous: The American Psychiatric Association lists "clinical depression" as a "disorder" (which implies "mental illness"); human statements, more so political statements, are moral issues for which the person is responsible. The suggestion that a given statement is COUSED (determined) by a medical (biological) illness is incorrect, patronizing, disrespectful. It attempts to dismiss the moral, political value of the statement as meaningless because it coming from a mentally ill person.
If the writer is talking metaphorically e.g. illness as a metaphor, the writer should label it as such, otherwise the readers would start demanding psychotropic drugs or electric shock to treat the mental illness.
Let's be serious...The political situation in Turkey is very complicated, nationally and internationally. Turkey/Ottomans is and has been the trachea between E & W . The intrigues have always been Byzantine type. Infiltrations, underground political governance has been the norm. Erdogan knows it, he is not stupid, nor is he "mentally ill",
The only way to approximate the truth is by establishing free political speech, free press starting with the USA

The MSM should publish your piece as well as pieces of other critics of the Lobby. The American voter can not exercise proper opinion in the absence of open information.
In my estimation the gravest problem in the USA is that the MSM acts like a propaganda machine, (while propagandizing itself as "free press"), and as a gate keeper for dissenting voices. It is a shame: let the American public hear what all political commentators have to say, otherwise there is no democracy.

Thank you for the good reminders Dr. Cole.
Nelson Mandela's excellent dancing rhythm, epitomizes his empathy with his people. The joy of life is a God given gift that belong to all of us.
As to your "the United States was a nakedly capitalist country", I would prefer "has been" instead of "was" and "mafia-styled" instead of "naked".

This is good news because it suggest that Am,erican journalists, writers and the public have become more aware that there is no freedom of (open)speech in the USA. As is happen in other societies where the people have known of State control of free speech, American locutors are going to go underground, an exiting proposition for the realists.

Excellent post, thanks. It adds evidence to the fact we have become a colony, worse than the British one.
It's a pity that Obama has not been able to deliver the Proclamation of Independence as he once suggested he would do.

"A little over half of the Congress violated their oath of office and trashed the fourth amendment."
Correction: Congress has trashed the whole Constitution. Congress' members have been operating in a state of terror in respond to which they have opted for treason.

"It now seems clear that the Egyptian military deployed a disproportionate use of force..."
Dear Professor Cole:
I mind the qualifier on the above: Bullets, more so ARM FORCES bullets,regardless of how many, are incompatible with political discourse in Egypt or in any country.

" If it was a revolution, it was perhaps a manifestation of the popular will, and so would have a sort of Rousseauan legitimacy."
Well, "popular will" correlates with public information which in terms correlates with who controls the rhetoric of it which in terms correlates with knowing contemporary IT (Social Networks) rhetoric.
There is some indication that recent large "public will" demonstration are manufactured products of such Social Networks.

Thank you for the post. Greenwald's argument is clear, constructive.
I wish Greenwald would also explain the reason for the government to avoid transparency. Also whether the journalists' "fear" is justified.

"One possible answer is that the shooting was not put under the sign of ‘terrorism’ by the FBI, but of ‘crime.’"
Dear Doctor Cole:
I am sure the folks in Baghdad "reminded" you of answers to related questions.

People around the world, more so the young people, have been waiting for a spiritual leader such a Pope Francis. The people of the world will go with him on love v. guns.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio an was always REAL in Argentina, from the time he was ordain as priest until he became a Cardinal (cooking his meals, riding public transportation, being with the people in the slams of Buenos Aires, etc.)and he remains REAL as a Pope: His physically unprotected body among the thousand of people from all over the world is REAL.
May Pope Francis succeed in saving the world from self destruction.

Chavez's Venezuela was (still is) in a defense war, therefore Chavez had to act as a dictator, a normal president's role in a war: the General dictates.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez has an interesting commentary on Chavez: link to revistaanfibia.com

"... the United States will never allow Iran to possess nuclear weapons."
That is very bad because in so saying the USA appoints itself as the judge and policemen of the world based on having the biggest gun: jungle law.